Shafaq News- Baghdad
In the narrow alleyways of oldBaghdad, traditional cafés still hold tightly to the Iraqi city’s fadingmemory, where brass tea kettles, the scent of cardamom, and slow conversationscontinue to outlive the rush of modern life.
Across al-Kifah, Bab al-Sheikh, andal-Sadriya, little seems to have changed. Old wooden chairs remain in theirplaces, tea is served the same way generations of Baghdadis remember it, andfaded photographs hanging from the walls preserve faces and moments fromanother time.
Shafaq News toured several of thehistoric cafés, capturing scenes of a Baghdad that still survives behind thecapital’s expanding concrete and crowded streets.
The walls carry portraits of kings,politicians, artists, and religious figures inside worn classic frames,alongside aging clocks and ceiling fans that continue to turn slowly abovecustomers gathered beneath them.
These cafés are no longer visitedonly by older residents recalling the past. Many young Iraqis now seek out thespaces for their quiet atmosphere and sense of nostalgia, far removed from themodern cafés that have spread across the city in recent years.
Despite decades of change, the cafésremain among the last places where the city’s older character still breathes —holdingonto the stories of generations and guarding fragments of the past as if timehad paused inside them.
